The maps below show individual donor contributions by zipcode areas to leading presidential candidates. The data for the maps are derived from the quarterly finance reports filed on July 15, 2007 with Federdal Election Commission (FEC).

Pan and zoom in to investigate the patterns of contributions at subregional levels in each of these maps. The list before each map shows the five zipcode areas that contributed the most to each of these four leading presidential candidates during the last quarter. Also provided, just below each map, is the list that shows the five zipcode areas that gave the most to these four leading presidential candidates, since January, 2007. The figures next to zipcodes show the approximate $ amounts raised.

We at Fortiusone are in the process of geocoding addresses of individuals who contributed to candidates of their choice. Some of these maps will be posted to Geocommons over the next several days. Hope you will come back and look for a blog post on the new campaign finance maps as well.

Funds raised by Clinton campaign

The top five zipcode areas by amounts: 2nd quarter, 2007

1. New York, NY 10021 (~$550k)

2. New York, NY 10022 (~$335k)

3. New York, NY 10023 (~$300k)

4. Washington, DC 20016 (~$280k)

5. New York, NY 10128 (~$210k)

The top five zipcode areas by amounts: 1st and 2nd quarter combined, 2007

1. New York, NY 10021 (~$950k)

2. New York, NY 10022 (~$615K)

3. New York, NY 10023 (~$588k)

4. Washington, DC 20016 (~$541k)

5. New York, NY 10128 (~$381k)

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Funds raised by Obama campaign

The top five zipcode areas by amounts: 2nd quarter, 2007

1. Chicago, IL 60614 (~$365k)

2. New York, NY 10021 (~$333k)

3. Chicago, IL 60610 (~$246k)

4. Washington, DC 20008 (~$201k)

5. Washington, DC 20016 (~$198k)

The top five zipcode areas by amounts: 1st and 2nd quarter combined, 2007

1. Berkely, CA 94709 (~$1,765k)

2. Chicago, IL 60614 (~$528k)

3. Cambridge, MA 02238 (~$474,513

4. New York, NY 10021 (~405k)

5. Chicago, IL 60610 (~348k)

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Fund raised by Giuliani campaign

The top five zipcode areas by amounts: 2nd quarter, 2007

1. New York, NY 10021 (~$437k)

2. New York, NY 10021 (~$278k)

3. Greenwich, CT 06830 (~$169k)

4. New York, NY 10128 (~$161k)

5. New York, NY 10028 (~$152k)

The top five zipcode areas by amounts: 1st and 2nd quarter combined, 2007

1. New York, NY 10021 (~$1,050k)

2. New York, NY 10021 (~$625k)

3. Greeenwich, CT 06830 (~$351k)

4. Palm Beach,FL 33480 (~$342k)

5. New York, NY 10028 (~$334k)

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Fund raised by Romney campaign

The top five zipcode areas: 2nd quarter, 2007

1. Greenwich, CT 06830 (~$125k)

2. New York, NY 10021 (~$109k)

3. St. Louis, MO 63124 (~$71k)

4. Provo, UT 84604 (~$65k)

5. Birmingham, MI 48009 (~$59k)

The top five zipcode areas by amounts: 1st and 2nd quarter combined, 2007

1. New York, NY 10021 (~$148k)

2. Greeenwich, CT 06830 (~$145k)

3. Provo, UT 84604 (~$127k)

4. Salt Lake City 84108 (~$104k)

5. Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304 (~$96k)

Popularity: 26% [?]

There have been several interesting blog posts of late on the demographics of Facebook and comparison to the demographics of sites like MySpace and LinkedIn. A few folks have looked at the international growth of Facebook, but I have not to date seen any discussion of the geography of Facebook. We all know it is big, but where is it hottest?

David here at FortiusOne decided to do some investigation and build out a dataset the number of members in the different regional networks on Facebook. When you register on Facebook you can join one regional network for the place you consider home. David tallied up the numbers for all the regional networks and geo-referenced the data set, and the top cities ranked out as such:

1. New York, NY = 273530

2. Chicago, IL = 246759

3. Washington, DC = 210160

4. Boston, MA = 171837

5. Atlanta, GA = 156643

6. Los Angeles, CA = 144718

7. Dallas / Fort Worth, TX = 120602

8. Minneapolis / St. Paul, MN =114404

9. Philadelphia, PA = 112495

10, Detroit, MI = 110704

The fascinating bit of this is how few west coast cities there are on the top ten list - only Los Angeles. The trend is even more striking when mapped out:

The Boston Washington corridor is flaming and Chicago definitely stands out in the midwest. So, why is Facebook not as big on the West Coast? Does the West Coast use other services, are there fewer universities, or are they on to the next new new thing.

Popularity: 32% [?]

OSM “State of the Map” - Manchester UK

Just got back from a great, if jet lagged, two days at the State of the Map in Manchester. Those not familiar OpenStreetMaps (OSM) is a project to collect collaborative street data around the globe that is open for anyone to use. In the US we take this for granted, but in many countries basic geographic data like streets maps can be prohibitively expensive. OSM started as a small London based project but has quickly spread to several countries and has a growing dedicated community of which about hundred were in Manchester. It was really impressive to see how far the project has come and the impressive road map for the future. Not a single bad talk or even bad question in the two days, including interesting insights from Ed Parsons of Google and Sean Phelan of Multimap.

The Open Source GeoWeb

of DIY Drones, which are basically remote control airplanes with a camera and a GPS strapped to them - magic presto you have open source aerial imagery. Sean Phelan talked about slightly more commercial versions running about $60,000. Could we have open source / user generated satellite imagery in the not so distant future? If anything it should break the strangle hold current imagery providers have on terms of service by providing low cost alternatives. Although I think that will be pushed more by balloons than drones. Often called “near space” observations there is a lot of activity going on in the area, mostly driven by the US military.

The original economics of balloons were very expensive, but ones like Near Space System’s get close to the million dollar mark and can cover a 600 mile radius.

The Balloon Boom

As the economics continue to scale down the feasibility of low cost balloons providing an economically viable source of imagery becomes a very real possibility. There is natural oligopoly of companies that can afford to launch satellites because of the economics involved, but balloons could turn that around very quickly providing much needed competition on price and terms of use. It also provides the intriguing possibility of open source imagery collection, although perhaps more interesting, persistent imagery (stationary balloon = real time feed). Aerial imagery replaced by drones and satellite replaced by balloons as low cost alternatives. They could be important pieces of infrastructure for an open source GeoWeb. If you are a Neal Stephenson fan you’ll appreciate the mass balloon image from Diamond Age.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Geography of the escort service scandal

Among many breaking news stories this week there was one that made a splash just before the Internet release of the phone records. Since then it has been reported that several interest groups including those with particular point of view have been poring over these lists.

Much of these efforts and scrutiny by media has yet to produce shock and awe type of revelations. But that could change. May be the potential for a big expose` has the Media continuing to cover the story.

Since we are the map people, spatial dimension of a(ny) story is of interest to us. So Geocommons decided to digitize and geocode a subset of these phone records, specifically telephone records from two time periods, December 22, 2000 to March 22, 2001 and December 22, 2004 to March 22, 2005.

What do these maps show?

Majority of the calls originated in Washington DC proper, Silver Spring, Baltimore, Columbia, Glen Burnie and Frederick in MD; Arlington, Alexandria, Lorton and Woodbrigde in VA and a few other DC suburbs.

Distribution of escort service calls in 2001 (1st quarter)

Distribution of escort service calls in 2005 (1st Quarter)

The rest of the hotspots are scattered across the lower 48 states, these clusters are in Southern California (Escondido); Tampa, FL (Tampron Spings area in 2005) and Orlando, FL (in 2001) and North-East Atlanta, GA.

Interestingly, the list of distinct phone numbers is relatively small, suggesting cliquishness of callers and possible exclusivity of the services. Further, a smaller subset among these can be characterized as frequent callers. Yet another interesting apsect is the temporal distribution of these calls: compared to any other month, January 2005 had the highest number of calls.

While the DC Madam scandal story is still unfolding just below the radar of attention grabbing news, intention is to digitize and geocode data for other time periods. So come back and visit us at Geocommons and use key word search ("Booty Calls") to explore maps/data.

PostScript

These maps do NOT reveal locations of individuals whose phone numbers are on the DC Madam's list. Instead, these maps show patterns of spatial distribution of calls to escort service. The heat maps were generated based on totals of the phone numbers that share the first six digits of the ten digit phone number. Unlike the calling area codes which are identified by the first 3 digits, the first six digits of a typical 10 digit number helps determine the geographic locations of local exchanges to which the phone numbers are tied.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Chris’s latest round of posts on the KML 2.2 specification got me thinking about the over all GeoWeb ecosystem, how it is structured and how it will evolve in the future. The term GeoWeb was coined by Mike Liebhold of the IFTF to encompass ““The integration of Web-accessible digital cartographic information with geocoded Web hypermedia.” The term and concept was picked up by several including John Hanke as the descriptor of Google’s activity in the space, which he has said will be as big as the page web.

We had a good talk with Michael Jones at Google Developer Day about the GeoWeb ecosystem and what he saw as Google’s role in it. Michael saw Google as the provider of the base layers of the ecosystem - providing the foundation for others to build upon. A set of technologies and data that enable others to create applications to solve a wide variety of problems.

Providing these technological and data layers is like providing the infrastructure to a modern economy that underpins the commerce built on top of it. It is a great business position to be in that creates very positive economies of scale, which the market naturally pushes towards having a few competitors in. Lots of historical examples you could get into at this point, but I’ll try to keep out of the weeds. Currently the GeoWeb has a couple players competing with Google namely Microsoft and Yahoo. There are some other players in the game nipping at the periphery but either do not see the bigger picture - like Mapquest being stuck in driving directions and seeing little use in Web 2.0 or user generated content - or do not have enough resources to bring the economies of scale to bear to play with the big boys.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6% [?]